The Quiet
by Uozumi
Summary: The Avengers rally around Tony in his time of great loss. AU based off the Iron Man 3 trailer.


**Fandom** _The Avengers_ (2012)/_Iron Man 3_ (2013)  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s)** Bruce, Clint, Natasha, Rhodey, Pepper, Steve, Tony; Pepper/Tony (Pepperony), implied Clint/Natasha (Clintasha)  
**Genre** Action/Alternate Universe/Death/Drama/Het  
**Rating**  
**Word Count** 2,024  
**Disclaimer** The Avengers c. Marvel, Paramount; Iron Man 3 c. Marvel, Paramount  
**Summary** The Avengers rally around Tony in his time of great loss.  
**Warning(s)** spoilers for _Avengers_ and spoilers for the _Iron Man 3_ trailer, general Mandarin spoilers supplied from various comics, character death  
**Notes** At 03:00 the night before I started writing this fic I wrote up a flash fic inspired by the _Iron Man 3_ trailer. I can't find it so now I'm going to write a proper fic inspired by that fic and that trailer. Thor does not make an appearance because it was hard to justify his return to Earth without making the fic too long and a bit messy. Marked as AU because we don't have to see the movie to know this is an AU. Also, I decided not to go into an Avengers vs. Mandarin's forces battle because I didn't want this fic to get too long and involved.

_**The Quiet**_

Tony found Pepper. She was deep in an installation in the middle of the arctic, taken hostage soon after their summer home was destroyed. He knew, once they surfaced, that they would not have much to get away from the frozen tundra before frostbite and hypothermia. Robots ran the installation and there were no clothes to steal to put over Pepper's shirt and jeans. They finally made it outside. The wind was bitterly cold. Tony was about to grab her and jet when the ground tremored. Pepper stumbled back. Tony reached out again and then winds shot up through vents in the ice and snow. Pepper let out a shriek as the force of the updrafts pushed her into the air and carried her away.

Tony tried to fight the updrafts to get to her. His suit had sustained heavy damage to find Pepper in the installation. His jets were at eighty percent and he got the feeling the suit did not want to push itself to its limits to grab Pepper and leave. Tony tried to force it, will it to get to Pepper. Drones began to fill the air. The drones ignored Pepper in the wind and aimed their guns towards Tony. A bullet shattered into his visor moments after Tony saw Pepper hit a glacier. He thought he heard her body smash down onto it, but he knew he was too far away and there was too much gunfire to have actually physically heard it.

Tony fell from the sky with a rough landing into the ground. He could feel pain in his chest and he could hear the flickering on the arc reactor. The drones were not still firing at him, though he could hear the drones firing at something. He could hear an incoming missile and he removed his broken face shield so he could see. The missile's light headed towards him. The suit wouldn't respond to his movements. Tony looked away to see what the problem with his legs was. A shadow fell over Tony and the missile's noise started to move in the opposite direction. Tony looked up. The War Machine stood over him.

"Come on," Rhodey said, "I'm here to take you home."

Tony did not fight it when Rhodey reached down and helped him stand. Rhodey used the War Machine to help support the Iron Man suit into one of the waiting transports. Tony saw a stretcher covered from head to toe heading into the cargo hold. He could not look away.

"We're bringing her home too," Rhodey said quietly. "We should have come sooner. I'm sorry, Tony."

Tony said nothing. It took a lot of doing, but his suit was stripped away and medical personnel surrounded him, working to make sure his heart would be all right. Rhodey stayed by Tony's side, though they rarely exchanged words the entire flight to New York.

The funeral was two days later. It was private and Tony found himself standing in front of Pepper's headstone alone after it was over. He knew Rhodey was lurking, making sure nothing would take Tony by surprise at this time. When Tony heard footsteps, he didn't look up. He felt someone come to stand beside him at a platonic distance. Tony didn't have to look. "I thought you were in Greenland."

"I was," Bruce said and left it at that.

Tony gestured to a waiting car. The driver took them into the heart of New York City. The tower was rebuilt and it was taller than its Stark incarnation. A large decorative A hung over the penthouse. Tony showed Bruce to the floor Tony designed for Bruce and explained that JARVIS would be offline for a while. Tony had to figure out how the computer system had gone so horribly wrong. What started out as a means to make the suit read Tony's every thought had turned the suit into some sort of android that had jealousy issues. It was the reason Pepper got kidnapped. It was the reason the suit let him down when he needed it to make the most of its eight-percent capacity in the Arctic. It also connected back to the JARVIS system. It made the tower too quiet.

Tony, with some input from Pepper, designed the tower to accommodate the Avengers Tony knew of onto the private floors. There was also commons rooms and laboratories where all Avengers could gather in if they so desired. For now only Bruce and Tony occupied the expanse. Tony had told all of them after they had their fill at the shawarma restaurant that when the Avengers Tower was open, they were all welcome to come and live there whenever they wished. It was their home, if they would so have it.

Two days after Bruce took up residence, Tony walked out onto one of the shared balconies and stopped. Clint sat on the railing of the balcony with his legs dangling over the edge. He was dressed in civilian clothes and did not have his arrows nor bow on his person that Tony could tell. Clint had the last remnants of some kind of sandwich. He didn't have to look to know it was Tony. "You did say, 'it's your home when it's ready.'" He looked away from the sunrise and at Tony.

"I did." Tony walked over, observing the reflection of the sun in the clouds. "Don't you have spy stuff?"

"Even spies rest," Clint said. "Besides, there's stuff going on here." He twisted around and put his feet on the balcony and stood. "I know some things." He ushered Tony back inside to a large commons area. Clint walked up to a table that doubled as a computer. Soon, he had some images and diagrams up on the tabletop display screen. "Reconnaissance from the attacks," Clint said. "As you can see, these drones aren't American, but…"

"…They're not any known drones," Tony finished. He zoomed in on some of the evidence, zoomed out on others. The pictures and such provided deliberately avoided showing the actual destruction of Tony's property or any people. "Who took these?"

Clint lowered his voice. "Our own reconnaissance drones." He could feel Tony's eyes on him, but he did not elaborate. "When Natasha and Steve get here, they'll probably have pictures of the actual incident." He observed Tony's facial expression.

Tony held Clint's gaze. "Let's get Bruce in on this. He's already been working on who might be behind things."

Tony, Clint, and Bruce tried to sort out who could be behind the attacks. Without Natasha's pending intelligence, there was little evidence. Tony threw himself into reworking his suit. Tony could still remember it looming over him protectively. He was so entranced by the suit's autonomy that he did not see how Pepper was kidnapped. He shook his head briefly. That same suit had kept him from her. Tony had to fix it. He needed the suit to be subordinate to his own needs and desires.

There was a small knock on the workroom door. Tony looked up. Steve stood just outside of the door. Tony hit a button that opened the doors from his desk. Steve entered and his eyes moved about the room, taking in the advanced technology. His expression was amazed but at the same time more adjusted to this much technology than he was last Tony saw Steve. "I thought I'd say thanks for letting me stay here," Steve said.

"All super hero crime fighting teams need a lair," Tony said. "Like the Justice League."

Steve nodded. "I heard about that. Batman, Superman, and everyone together like us. We're living in a comic book." His eyes settled on Tony.

Tony observed all of this. He walked over to his work chair and ran his hand over the top edge of the chair back. "Look," he said, "I know Fury sent you. Maybe not Bruce, but, you know, the right words can be motivational." There was a part of Tony that knew Bruce probably could not be made to do anything Bruce did not want to do, but this had to be said to someone. "This is my fight."

"We know it's your fight," Steve's eyes remained on Tony, "and Fury didn't send us." His gaze did not waiver from Tony's eyes, "Before we left New York, you said that this tower was our home. You also said that we weren't soldiers." Steve paused and considered his words. "You're right. All of us are more than soldiers. We're a team." His body language was open and relaxed. "Maybe even more than that."

Tony held Steve's gaze. Then he looked down at his hands on the back of his chair.

"Come upstairs," Steve said. "Natasha has some information. When we heard about the Arctic, Clint went on ahead and we did some digging."

Tony looked up at Steve, expecting pity. He was met with a strong resolve and an underlying anger directed at no one present. When they gathered with the others, Tony's eyes traversed the group. Like Steve, there was no pity. Natasha was set for business. Clint was resolute. Bruce appeared more certain of everyone in this room than last Tony saw them all together.

Once they settled around a computer that had a table screen and holoscreen, Natasha slipped a flash drive into the port on the table's side. "We have some information. There were eyes," she chose her words carefully, "in the area when your home was breached." Her eyes only left Tony's face to concentrate on taking the photo files from the table top screen and direct them into the holoscreen above. There were various photographs from different angles of a similar group of craft. They looked like helicopters but there was no sign of physical pilots. "They're converted, but there's no evidence of who converted them yet." She inclined her head, eyes sweeping over the image. "Some might tell you that it's one of ours, but it's not."

"Appropriated," Tony surmised. His eyes flashed with an idea, remembering Clint's words from a few days ago. "If you have images of this, you have images of the attack."

Clint and Natasha's eyes met and then Natasha answered, "We do. Not many."

Tony did not need many. "If you put the images into folder 4872, I can run a program. I only need to check one thing." His eyebrows furrowed. Natasha slid the correct contents into the desired folder. Tony entered in some commands. Several pictures of the destruction of the summer home itself flooded the screen on the tabletop. Tony sorted through the pictures and sent two of them up onto the holoscreen. Both pictures were from a distance, but one more so than the other. Tony isolated sections of each picture, zooming in on Pepper's form. "Tell me what you see."

"Double exposure?" Steve asked in a voice that suggested he already knew he was wrong. It did look like it could be that if the technology was older. Pepper's legs were missing in the first image. By the second image, only her head and hands were visible.

"Teleportation," Tony said. His eyebrows furrowed and he looked away from the holoscreen. "It's the Mandarin."

Clint and Natasha recognized the name. Bruce and Steve did not.

"He teleports people to a specific location," Tony said. "He must have moved her from there to the Arctic base before I could find her location." He licked his lips and sent the pictures from the holoscreen to the tabletop screen. He should have known. The Mandarin kidnapped Tony in a similar fashion not soon after the battle with Loki. Tony escaped. He had not forgotten the encounter but soon after a series of events demanded Tony's attention and he came to such a clear understanding of robotics that he was too preoccupied to revisit the encounter in his mind.

Tony's eyes moved to meet Steve's gaze, then Clint's, then Natasha's, and finally Bruce's gaze. "He's mine. No matter what our plans are, he's mine."

There was silent understanding and respect. After a few minutes, they began to strategize together.

**The End**


End file.
